Interwar India Research Articles

Paramilitary Organisations in Interwar India

This paper examines the emergence of paramilitary and volunteer movements in interwar British India. These organisations emerged largely in response to the political climate in India as well as developments elsewhere around the globe. The most notable amongst these was the emergence of fascism in Europe. We examine the politics and ideas of these organisations through two case studies: the Hindustani Seva Dal and the Khaksar Tehreek. Notwithstanding the many differences between the two, both groups were profoundly influenced by a broader fascist moment. In doing so, they embodied certain aspirations and anxieties that were characteristic of the interwar era. Through these case studies, then, we hope to provide some insights into a frequently overlooked aspect of the interwar period in British India.

Stephen Legg.Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities, and Interwar India.

Stephen Legg.<i>Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities, and Interwar India</i>.

SCIENTISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS: THE INDO-MUSLIM “FASCISM” OF INAYATULLAH KHAN AL-MASHRIQI

This essay offers a detailed reconstruction of the thought of Inayatullah Khan al-Mashriqi, a camp-follower of fascism in inter-war India who sought to reformulate Islam as a “Religion of Science” according to the precepts of Darwinian evolutionism. Mashriqi has so far been neglected because his political impact was only short-term and did not contribute to the larger story of decolonization in India and Pakistan. But far from being marginal, Mashriqi's philosophical ruminations actually provide a window for a much-needed re-evaluation of the meaning of colonial modernity. While there was much in Mashriqi's writing that conforms to the usual picture of anti-colonial nation-building—his obsession with the truth of science, for instance, and his emphasis on disciplinary political methodologies—the by now standardized critique of such features in the “postcolonial” literature no longer suffices. Behind a façade of continuities with nineteenth-century “Enlightenment” traditions stood a much darker vision of modernity that no longer had any recourse to the certainties of a grand narrative of modernization. Instead, it was a vision that fluctuated between mystical exuberance and deep pessimism. The only sense of certainty was provided by a radical notion of emotional authenticity and a related belief in quasi-religious leadership figures. The larger conclusion to be drawn from the dualistic and contradictory structure of Mashriqi's “fascism” is that the intellectual history of inter-war South Asia needs to be given relative autonomy from the standard nationalism–modernization narrative, for rather than the continuation of an earlier modernity, it should be interpreted as the starting point of a new and much darker formation that arguably continues into the present.

Towards a ‘Hindoo Marriage’. Anglo-Indian Monetary Relations in Interwar India, 1917–35

A puzzling feature of interwar Anglo-Indian economic relations is the contrast between Whitehall's relatively hands-off attitude to Indian tariff policies, and its insistent hands-on approach to monetary policy issues in the colony. Both sets of issues were, at various times, equally contentious. But while Britain's strategic objectives in India paved the way for the Fiscal Autonomy Convention, the road towards a similar monetary ‘convention’ was never taken. Rather, thanks to Britain's external financial problems, the interwar decades saw initially a tightening, and later a refinement, of London's control over Indian monetary policies. This paper hopes to set out the processes at work more clearly than has been attempted before, and to account for them. The interpretation offered here is consistent with the ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ explanation of British imperialism during the interwar years, and of the postwar de-colonization process.

Money supply and asset choice in inter-war India

Money supply and asset choice in inter-war India